Fact Check: NGC's Inside the VietNam War ≈100,000! People Killed/Captured in a March '75 Evacuation?

[JohnBckWLD]

On the 3 hour National Geographic Channel’s Documentary, “Inside the Vietnam War”, at the tail end of the 3 part, at about 39 minutes in is an admittedly vague statement: In 1975, sometime between the March 1st NVA invasion of the central highlands and the fall of Da Nang on March 30th…

@NGC

A mass of [South Vietnamese] refugees and soldiers [whose officers abandoned them] move toward the coast to escape the advancing enemy force. A single narrow mountain road fills with 200,000 women, children and soldiers. The NVA shells the escape route, nearly half are killed or captured.

Many questions come to mind, but the two most obvious are:

1. Assuming “nearly” half of 200,000 is somewhere in the neighborhood of 85,000-95,000 people, is there any citeable proof NGC’s figure is accurate?
2. “Killed or captured” could be 12 dead, 0 wounded and 90,000 captured. Are there any estimates on the number of casualties?

Thanks in advance

[Fubaya]

I don’t know if the numbers are accurate but that was a well known scramble for Tuy Hoa Air Base that was later called the “Convoy of Tears” which resulted in massive casualties. I doubt anyone knows an accurate number. We probably only know how many troops set out for Tuy Hoa, estimates of how many civilians joined them, and how many made it there.

This wiki page has no cites but says:

Of those who started the trek, only a minority completed it. They included some 60,000 civilian refugees, perhaps a third of the total who started, and some 20,000 support troops, only a quarter of those who departed Pleiku. Of the elite Rangers who covered the withdrawal, only 900 out of 7,000 survived. During the ordeal, graphic footage of the “Convoy of Tears”, as it was called, was screened on South Vietnamese television, and panic spread to the entire nation.

[Nametag]

What you’re looking for is indeed the “Convoy of Tears,” but that article is a bit off the mark. The disaster started in the central highlands, and is described here: 1975 spring offensive - Wikipedia

[LSLGuy]

Also, be sure you understand the terminology. In military parlance, a “casualty” is someone injured enough to be unable to continue fighting. This includes someone killed. It also includes someone injured in a simple accident or someone suffering a debilitating disease.

The way the OP used the term, it smelled to me like he thought it meant someone killed by enemy action. Not so.